Worried about 11plus - comprehension score

[Tead]

Hello
we are trying to preparing for the 11plus.
a few weeks ago my son visited a tutor who gave him a small test. He scored well on some areas but his comprehension was very, very poor.

looking back, he has struggled with some of the more complicated comprehension work, in particular where the reading extract is more complex and requires greater concentration.

I have been focusing on his reading and making sure he reads everyday. I thought this would be enough but obviously it’s not working.

any suggestions how I can improve his comprehension skills.

he read Charlotte’s Web but his main interest is in diary of a wimpy kid. I am listening to him read Harry Potter now, as it’s interesting how he is missing some words and is at times scanning the text rather than reading each word. I hope this will improve his comprehension.

Same here, the teachers don’t mention the 11+ at all. It’s up to the parents to find out and prepare the kids themselves.

Thanks
this is what I am planning on doing.

Thanks. I have started to read with him and have set aside 20 minutes 4 times a week, with me reading a few paragraphs as well.

Is he taking the GL or CEM?
CEM is very time strict in comparison to the GL.
Skimming is a very important skill during the test- so making sure he does practice books from Letts/CPG would definitely help him. Also doing wordsearches and crosswords suitable for his age.
Comprehension will normally throw in questions such as what a word means so vocabulary building is essential- there is a difference in knowing a word and using it (silly as that sounds, can he explain a word meaning rather then just a sentence and Synonyms/ Antonyms).

Ensuring he doesn't make assumptions and finds the facts/evidence in the text is essential- you would be surprised how many kids pick the wrong answer because when it's a tick box of 4 answers - 2 are very similar and assumption takes over.

My two have passed their 11 plus (one starting this year) no tutors but lots of cpg/bond/letts preparation. We are a low income family (so cant afford a tutor) and both mine have passed well above the benchmark.

Ooh as another poster said, classics are very important- old words seem to pop up so ensuring the books aren't modernised too much is helpful and a good range of genre. My children didn't like poetry for example but the more we talked about the words they understood it more. The Letts comprehension book and bond were very helpful to find the weakness (fiction/non fiction).

We done 30 minutes of work/reading each night and a few hours 11 plus work on a weekend. Both of mine really wanted to go to grammar so that was a good motivation to work during the weekends and holidays.

Sorry last thing, this is what I mean about assumption and fact. During the SATs reading exam the media / teachers / parents were complaining about this question.

She wriggled back inside the tent...
What does this tell you about how Priya got inside the tent? Tick one.

• She ran quickly inside.
• She jumped through the flap.
• She had to squeeze in.
• She crept in quietly.

Answer: The answer was that she had to squeeze in, but the teacher believed many children would have chosen crept in.

It's a very simple question but again a lot of children associate going back into a tent at night as creeping rather then squeezing so it's making sure your child highlights the word "wriggled back" in their head and think squeeze in.

In our area, close to super selective grammar area but in a different LEA, the state school teachers are not allowed to advise/comment on suitability for grammars - though DD’s teacher when asked said “I’m not allowed to advise you but if I were then DD would be the person in the class a hypothetical grammar would be most suitable for”.

and @Sirloinwithlove are you in eg Kent or Bucks? Because in a super selective area of course the 11+ is ahead of average expectations, otherwise why would they exist? They include Y6 content but are taken at start of Y6 so even if kids are bright they won’t normally have come across some of the content. Yes primary schools differentiate but this is normally through harder questions on same content rather than new content, otherwise it’s not possible to do whole class teaching. My kids’ primary was excellent (I think 9 kids out of 60 sat 11+ and 7 got in) and gave DD a great grounding but we still had to teach her some of the Y6 maths concepts before the 11+.

No it isn't low - Kent is unusual in that there area LOT of grammar schools so as you say half the year get in.

In most areas grammars are very selective, so say one boys and a girls grammar for a wide area with many many schools/students competing to get in.

In one of my children's years (90 kids so roughly 45 girls) 4 got in. Some years its a few more. This is also a good school

That's why its important to clarify that the OP isn't in a fully grammar area (ie Kent) but in an area where kids ARE expected to know yr 6 syllabus before it is taught and where it is highly competitive to get in.

4 girls I should say from the year so roughly 4 from 45!

Also - the past papers have to be relevant to the school/area you are taking the exam. So whether it is GL or CEM or another system for example.

@Alargeoneplease89
Is he taking the GL or CEM?

It will not be CEM because it's for Y7 entry for a state school, which will be a paper-based test. CEM have stopped producing these tests (the 2022 test for 2023 was their last year), instead only offering computer-based tests which are impractical for state providers to administer (as they would need 1000s of computers at the same time.)

It is overwhelmingly likely to be GL as nearly all LAs that previously used CEM have switched to GL, being the closest alternative provider.

Oh that's interesting. When my eldest done it, I prepared him with GL then they changed to CEM so we had to swap quite a bit of the VR/English material we used.

My daughter was the last to sit the CEM, I just checked on their schools website. Thank you for that as I gave my old books to a friend and will have to let them know some will be useless.

@Sirloinwithlove As I said in my message, it's not a grammar school county. We have grammars within travelling distance but we are a purely comprehensive LEA with four comprehensives only in our town, all of which are decent schools (though two better than the others). So few children apply as they will get a decent education locally without a longer journey to school and the bright ones will still come out with great exam results. In fact I suspect many parents are not even aware of the grammar schools as a possibility as they aren't on any of the information parents are directed to. Most of the kids at DD's grammar come from the other side of that school, where alternative options are not generally as good, or from much further away, with some travelling well over an hour each way to get to school.

DD's year was actually an unusually high number applying from her primary, and it generally has more grammar applications than the other primaries near us. I stand by it being an excellent primary, the best in our town in my view (though there's a bit of snobbery from some parents who prefer the worse-performing school which is further from the poorer part of town).

We will be doing GL - it was CEM but moved to GL this year.

I spoke to a friend's daughter who thinks 2 out of the 15 children in her year passed the 11+. As i said, our area doesn't have the 11+ so parents need to automatically enroll their children for the 11+ exam of a nearby borough.

The 11+ exam will only pass 25% of students so its pretty tough.
thanks for all of the advice. i have started reading harry potter with him. i think it will take 2 months before we notice any improvement.

Comprehension was probably my DD worst subject.... But she was amazing at verbal reasoning and would usually get full marks/only 1-2 wrong each practice test so I figured that would bump up her score. Most DC will have one subject which they are not as good as as the others. There was a child in DD's class that has been well above every other child in the class since reception when they were doing algebra!! They passed but didn't do as well as everyone expected because they couldn't get their head around non verbal reasoning.

What we did with DD was....
*Read.... every night.
*Write down words she didn't know the meaning of, we would look them up and talk about synonyms and antonyms of them.
*Bought her a dictionary so she could look up the words as she read, then she could re read the sentence with fluency knowing the meaning of the word.
*Use READ THEORY app. It's great for short bursts of reading comprehension and adapts to the level your DC is at. You can therefore see if they are improving. We did this daily too.

"Ensuring he doesn't make assumptions and finds the facts/evidence in the text is essential- you would be surprised how many kids pick the wrong answer because when it's a tick box of 4 answers - 2 are very similar and assumption takes over."

Nice tip, we found this technique very useful for MC English comprehension paper

@Alargeoneplease89 your tips are exactly what we are doing, no wonders your children got to great schools.
I think the fuel to get good marks is motivation. In children it doesn’t come natural if they’re not used to studying, or reading. To be fair, we don’t know what the job market will be when our children grow up. Will they need to compete against AI, or would the “easy”
jobs disappear?
I personally think they need to understand it’s for their own future, that we as parents believe in them and support them to achieve their goals as they’re building their future.

Reading full books (old classics and more recent ones) is very important. I’d say reading full books is best, at least 20 pages each day. Why? Because they need to understand the plot, what is important in the story, the context, etc. and as an extra, it works wonders talking about the period in which it was written, read the biography of the author as well. It makes the story more meaningful, to understand the motivations of the story better.
think about reading “the hobbit” for example. Why is it a classic? Reading about Tolkien’s life, gives the story an additional dimension. What about reading Dickens? Why is he considered one of the best writers ever? I’d suggest “the price” by Edgar Allan P. That one opens everyone’s mind. It’s lovely.
one last suggestion. Ask your kid to tell you the what, who, where, when, how, why of the story. How was the story narrated? Who does what? Why? When did that happen? Etc. this always helps to build good summaries when re-telling the story.

Wish you both great success!

yes, engage with him, ask him questions, read to him more and talk about it. We only ever found the time as part of bedtime routine. The advantage was it meant it happened every single day. Even if he were reading to you every day, you need to mix it up and ask questions or the words could be bypassing his brain almost completely.

He'll probably love you becoming more engaged in what he's reading, rather than trying to multitask. I would err on the side of easy books to start with so he has lots of success, and that feeds his confidence. You could ask the school librarian or his teacher for some book recommendations.